Ronaldo vs Ronan

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Ronaldo Ronan

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 100 years in which either name was published, Ronaldo for 77 years and Ronan for 23 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

• 1914–2000 Ronaldo ahead
• 2001 Ronan ahead
• 2002–2003 Ronaldo ahead
• 2004–2025 Ronan ahead

Side by side

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Ronaldos alive today are over 20; half the Ronans are over 7. That is 13 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Ronaldo Texas (3.7×), California (3.4×), Arizona (2.3×)
• Ronan Alaska (3.1×), Washington (2.8×), Oregon (2.6×)

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

• Ronaldo vs Ronald
• Ronaldo vs Ronnie
• Ronaldo vs Ron
• Ronaldo vs Ronda
• Ronaldo vs Ronny
• Ronan vs Ronald
• Ronan vs Ronnie
• Ronan vs Ron